"Thank you. I resolved—as you see—to appeal once more to our old—"
"Friendship?" he suggested.
"Yes—friendship," she repeated, slowly. "It might have been called so—once."
"Long ago! So long ago that—I do not see how anything practical can come of appealing to it," he said, pointedly. "Moreover, the manner in which the friendship was trampled on—by you—not once, but twice, not only destroyed it, but—if I may say so—replaced it."
His hollow eyes burned upon her. Wrapped in his cloak, his white hair gleamimg amid the wonderful ewers and dishes, he had the aspect of some wizard or alchemist, of whom a woman might ask poison for her rival, or a philter for her lover. Victoria, fascinated, was held partly by the apparition before her, partly by an image—a visualization in the mind. She saw the ballroom in that splendid house, now the British Embassy in Paris, and once the home of Pauline Borghese. She saw herself in white, a wreath of forget-me-nots in her hair. She has just heard, and from a woman friend, a story of lust and cruelty in which Edmund Melrose was the principal actor. He comes to claim her for a dance; she dismisses him, in public, with a manner and in words that scathe—that brand. She sees his look of rage, as of one struck in the face—she feels again the shudder passing through her—a shudder of release, horror passing into thanksgiving.
But—what long tracts of life since then!—what happiness for her!—what decay and degeneracy for him! A pang of sheer pity, not so much for him as for the human lot, shot through her, as she realized afresh to what evening of life he had come, from what a morning.
At any rate her manner in reply showed no resentment of his tone.
"All these things are dead for both of us," she said quietly.
He interrupted her.
"You are right—or partly right. Edith is dead—that makes it easier for you and me to meet."